Month: October, 2012

This is an article about one peticular sexual assault scandal that is drawing some national negative attention to the small nescac college. A former Amherst college student published her ‘horrifying’ rape experience to the school’s newspaper, but the major issue that is receiving national attention was the fact that Amherst did not support her or provide her the adequate care the she deserved after the assault.

I think that this is very sad. I remember learning at the beginning of the year that one of the largest fears that girls and boys have about telling someone about a rape incident is that no one will believe them. Here is the proof. I think that in college a lot of sexual behavior, whether it is experienced on a dancefloor or in a dorm room, is overlooked and passed off as a small thing. That is not ok! If anyone feels as though they have been sexually assaulted in any way it is the school’s job to give them the right and sufficient support that they truly deserve. Hopefully this story makes other colleges double-check their own school’s idea of sexual assault and what help is necessary to provide and when.

As I have been researching voter suppression for my paper I have come across multiple eye-opening articles on the topic.

The first article I found is from the Huffington Post about an explicit comment made by the Pennsylvania Republican Majority Leader Michael Turzai on voter suppression.

The second article I found is from the New York Times about the history of voter suppression and how close to nothing has changed since the 19th century in terms of the concepts behind voter suppression.

I think it is hard to ignore the facts when it comes to who is suppressing voters — Republicans. In the first article, Michael Turzai – a REPUBLICAN leader of Pennsylvania – said it himself ““Voter I.D –which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania? Done.” It doesn’t get more straight forward than that. Voter suppression has always targeted the same people: minorites, the poor, students, and women never the upper-middle class or wealthy white man. These people also happen to be the same people who gave President Obama the election in 2008, aka the democrats. Now why would Republicans want to suppress those votes again? I think voter suppression is a huge problem and should not be ignored.

This post is in response to a blog that Professor Papoulis posted a few days ago about the new Big Bird motif for the Obama campaign. This is an article about a massive protest against Romney’s plan to end public broadcasting in the form a muppet parade. This parade is one example of how this image has caught wild fire in the public sphere. I think the reason why this image has blown up is because it shows weakness in Romney’s campaign. People say that instead of trying to eliminate the important social problems of today like unemployment or war (something along those lines) Romney has decided to target Big Bird- an innocent lovable muppet from the beloved children’s TV show Sesame Street. Low blow? or valid point?

This is an article about Jim Lehrer’s recent performance in the presidential debate, as well as his personal persepctive on the matter.

Mr. Lehrer has been a target of intensifying criticism from partisans and analysts who complain that he did not sufficiently probe the candidates in the first two debates and was not particularly aggressive in following up his questions. The result, these critics say, is that the nominees were let off the hook on vital matters and the debates meandered to the point where they verged on being downright tedious.

I agree with the critics. I am upset that Lehrer allowed for so many important topics to get overlooked. There was definitely a point in the debate when he could have been more assertive and interjected with a probing question ins tead he sat back and let the candidates run the show. Obviously that didn’t work out too well… How do you guys feel?

With relatively recent speculations concerning the Colorado shooter’s mental health, this recent study caught my eye. The article questions whether it is fair for criminals with mental disorders should have their sentences reduced due to their genetic conditions. I have a hard time with this question. On the one hand you look at the crime such as the shooting and you think – unforgivable, but on the other hand you feel a distant sympathy for the killer because they are “sick”, suffering from their mental disease. I think it depends on the severity of the crime as well as the severity of the mental disease.

Below is another interesting article relating the Colorado shooting with American’s psyche.